r shown to be innocent. Each of these cases points up some particular facet of the problems with the criminal justice system: lack of decent counsel, pseudoscientific testimony and evidence, racism, and the overeagerness of law enforcement and prosecutors to make the case stick against whomever they have decided is guilty of the crime. But in every case it is a combination of factors that brings about the injustice. The book is written in a colloquial style and conveys information concisely and, within the limitations of the format, fully. Although the reader might be interested in acquiring more information there is never a sense that the authors have unduly slanted the presentation to favor their own case.
It is, however, always clear to the reader that the style of the presentation borrows a great deal from television. For example, the description of the case of Tim Durham, which is offered in the chapter on "junk science," provides an introduction to the case, followed by a discussion of the history of hair as evidence, and this is then followed by selections from the testimony of the forensic hair examiner. This isolation of the events makes for a lucid presentation. But it also tends to obscure the other problems in the individual case. In Durham's case, for instance, there were eleven witnesses who testified that they had seen him elsewhere at the time of the crime. But the Assistant District Attorney's use of the hair expert's very shaky evidence (and that of an absurdly inept molecular biologist) led to a conviction despite the witnesses. When asking how it was possible that "junk science . . . topp[ed] the eleven alibi witnesses who swore they saw Tim Durham three hundred miles away" the authors get the focus they wanted for the particular topic of bad science (69). They persuasively show that, especially with inadequate counsel, prosecutors can make pseudoscientific witnesses carry a weight they should not have...